HIS 205- Chapter 1

Perioikoi

"Those who live around"

Agon

"agony" or "struggle"

Sophocles' "Antigone" explores the nature of power and the danger of pride, or

"hubris"

Diaspora

"the scattering"

Exodus

"to exit"

Helots

Captives/slaves

Ark of the Covenant

Container of tablet of the law - the Torah

Aside from Homer's poems, the earliest Greek writing consists of

Curses, official dedications, and lists

Nebuchanezzar

Destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the Temple

Battle of Salamis

Destruction of Persian navy

Canaan

Homeland of the Hebrews

Time

Honor or worth

What role did Persia play in the Peloponnesian War?

It lent naval support to Sparta and financed the continuing Spartan war effort

How did the Lycurgan code of life shape Sparta?

It militarized Spartan society

What was the purpose of the Egyptian "Book of the Dead"?

It prepared the living for their encounter with the god Osiris after they died

Why should Athenian democracy always be qualified as "Athenian" democracy?

It was complex and quite different from democracy today

Papyrus

Paper made from reeds

How did the economic basis of Greek life change during the Dark Age?

The Greeks relied less on sea trading and more on farming

Why did the Persian incorporation of Lydia launch the Persian Wars?

The Persians needed clear access to the Mediterranean Sea

For the Greeks, the polis was what three things?

a built-up physical place, a territory, and a political community of citizens

The main religion of the Persian Empire at the time of its invasion of Greece was

a dualistic religion eventually systematized by the prophet Zoroaster

Traditionally the first fixed date of ancient Greece is 776 BCE, when

a pan-Hellenic festival was convened at Olympia

Mycenae

capital of Agamemnon's kingdom in northern Peloponnesus

Çatal Hüyük was a

community of nearly a thousand rectangular houses in Anatolia

What reforms did the statesman Solon institute in his attempt to deal with the social tensions in Athens?

debt relief and broader participation of the different Athenian orders in the political system

Ostracism, which the Athenians introduced during the interwar years (489-481 BCE), was a

democratic technique for expelling dangerous individuals

The first domesticated animal was the

dog

The Assyrian and Babylonian attacks marked the beginning of the Diaspora, or

emigration of Hebrews from Israel to other lands

Thermoplaye

famous 300 where Spartans help Persians so Athenians could defeat Persians

Phalanx

fighting formation

Battle of Marathon

first defeat of Persians

Sumer was at the mercy of its

great rivers

The original Egyptian script is called

hieroglyphics

The soldier who stood in line with his fellows in the rectangular formation of infantry was called a

hoplite

The Dark Age of Greece is so-called because

the Greece of this period left few material traces

Peloponnese

A big peninsula in southern Greece Homeland of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Helen in Homer's myth

Neolithic Period

10,000 BCE - 8,000 BCE

Paleolithic Period

250,000 BCE - 10,000 BCE

Where did our species, "homo sapiens sapiens", reach its basic form?

Africa

"New Sparta"

After 1200 BCE, the Dark Ages Arrival of new peoples Formed in the Eurotas River Valley

The Neolithic period connotes the move to what kind of society?

Agricultural

Heinrich Schliemann

Businessman who wanted to find Troy

Pericles

Athenian War hero of Thucydides' history; he does not make it through the war

Why did the Peloponnesian cities led by Sparta fight Athens in the Peloponnesian War?

Athenian imperialism threatened the city-state system of Greece

Delian League

Athens - Big Players Original purpose was to fight Persia Turned into Athens being an imperialistic power

Year long siege at Syracuse

Athens started to conquer East did not work

What was the great Athenian mistake that led to the Peloponnesian War?

Athens thought it could rise above the balance of powers that produced the polis system of the many Greeces

Which of the following best describes tyrants?

Autocrats who seized power by force

Historical Period

Begins around 3,000 BCE

Why was Egypt more politically stable, confident, and self-sufficient than Mesopotamia?

Egypt's geography left it isolated and protected from frequent turmoil

Hieroglyphics

Egyptian form of writing

What is the chief characteristic of the "Mesopotamian model" of civilization?

Empires emerge from important cities and dominate and incorporate other cities and lands

Sparta

Famed for both its frugality and for its fighters Result of an attempt to create a "perfect state" with perfect warriors

Herodotus

Father of History

Sumer/Sumerians

First civilization

Torah

First five books of the Hebrew Bible

Kleos

Glory and honor

Abraham

Had special relationship with God; father of the Hebrews

Rosetta Stone

Helped decipher hieroglyphics

Thucydides

Historian of the Peloponnesian War, wrote the funeral oration

Historiari

History or "to investigate"

For Thucydides, what was the meaning of the Peloponnesian conflict?

History was a contest for power, and the Peloponnesian conflict a case study of its abuse and the dire consequences of bad policies

Why did the festival to the god Dionysus in Athens become another opportunity for civil and political discourse?

In the hands of the great playwrights, these tragedies probed universal human problems and, under their guise, contemporary Athenian crises

Neolithic Revolution

Invention and discovery of agriculture

Which of the following statements about the Greek alphabet is TRUE?

It appeared early in the eighth century BCE, adapted from the Phoenician alphabet

Ethical Monotheism

One God that cares about people's moral standing

Agamemnon

King of Mycenaen Greeks - main character in the Illiad and Odyssey

Akhenaten

King who wanted a monotheistic worship of the Sun God

Judges

Leaders who took over after Moses died

King Leonidas

Led 300 Thermoplaye (Sparta) Most heroic character in Spartan history Persian Wars (490 - 479 BCE) Confrontation of Greece with Darius and Xerxes, Kings of Persia

Linear A

Minoan writing system

Tabernacle

Moving temple where the Ark of the Covenant was carried

Linear B

Mycenaens writing system

Nile Valley

Narrow bend in midst of desert

In what way did Greece remake itself locally after the Mycenaeans?

Powerful extended families established themselves

King Cyrus of Persia

Rebuilt the temple

Hammurabi's Code of Law

Set of rules and penalties

What happened after the cities of Mycenaean Greece were attacked and destroyed?

Some people still lived in the same locations, but not in the same style

What important clue strongly suggests that Homer's poems really culturally belonged to the Greek Dark Age rather than the Mycenaean era?

The cremation of Homer's heroes

After the death of King Solomon

The kingdom was divided into two independent kingdoms

Why was Europe well behind the Near East culturally and economically?

The warmer Fertile Crescent blossomed while Europe still felt the effects of the Ice Age

Why did the Hebrew civilization endure and remain largely immune to assimilation, unlike the other civilizations of the early ancient world?

They developed a singular religious identity and core beliefs

Why were archaic Greek institutions like the Olympic Games or the sanctuary of the god Apollo at Delphi so important?

They mediated local differences between rivals, for the Greeks were deeply divided

What was the purpose of the building of the Pyramids?

They were tombs for the rulers, to receive their bodies for the journey to the afterlife

Cuneiform

Type of writing Sumerians used

Arete

Virtue or excellence

Why was God's renewal of the covenant with the Hebrews a defining moment in Jewish religious history?

With it the Hebrews had their own legally based and religiously sanctioned legal and moral code

Battle of Pleatea

last major battle of Persian War, ultimate victory over Persians

The most celebrated document to survive from the reign of Hammurabi is his famous

law code

Lycurgus

legendary law giver that gave a Utopian society

European hunter-gatherers of the period from about 35,000 to 15,000 years ago began to produce

objects with symbolic meaning

In Mesopotamian society, writing was a tool that empowered

priests and rulers

The Athenian "demos" held Pericles in high esteem because he

provided jobs, food, and diversions, and stroked their pride in their polis

The "Epic of Gilgamesh" is not only the world's first great literary work, but an example of the meshing of

royal and religious persons

Hoplites

soldiers

Herodotus indirectly warned Athens about the dangers of

straying beyond its native land

At the battle of Marathon in 490 BCE,

ten thousand heavily armed Athenian hoplites defeated the Persian force

By studying Indo-European words, scholars have concluded

that the original Indo-European speakers came from a northern region

The wealth of the Mycenaeans came primarily from

trade and war

The great epic poems, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey"

were retellings of older oral stories from the preceding Mycenaean Age